Android 5.0 lollipop to feature Ambient Display

Alexey Zhukov

14:49, October 21, 2014

One of the unique features of the Moto X is its Active Display. For those unfamiliar, Active Display basically turns on your phone’s display whenever you pick up the phone, or in the case of the 2014 Moto X, when you approach it. Now interestingly enough it seems that the feature has been integrated into Android 5.0 Lollipop.

According to reports, Android 5.0 will have a similar feature called Ambient Display. The official Android 5.0 Lollipop page also briefly mentioned the feature and described it as, ”Where supported by the hardware, your device will wake up as soon as you pick it up or tap the screen twice.”

This is an incredibly useful feature as it could come in handy when your hands are full or if you don’t want to have to keep pressing the sleep/wake button to check whether or not you might have notifications waiting for you. It’s also great for those who might be worried it could end up wearing out the button as well.

Unfortunately it was not mentioned specifically as to which devices would have the hardware capable of supporting Ambient Display, but presumably we’re looking at high-end flagship devices here, with the odd low-mid range smartphone thrown into the mix, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled anyway.